The flashbacks in some episodes give us an insight into your character’s background. Does that help you? –David, via email.

TS: It is a really interesting thing to create a character, and oftentimes when you have a script that’s a play or a film, you have a beginning, a middle, and an end, so you really create something and I think we did that when we got these scripts. And then you learn new pieces of information that may contradict what you created. It keeps popping me, that illusion. Nothing can be very solid and it’s very exciting as they keep throwing these explosives into the work, which keeps everyone on their toes.
NL: It’s fun, and tricky. Because you’re like, oh, because everything that I just did was sort of wrong except now I have got to… find a new way to make it make sense.
TS: I remember there was something about Piper’s father having an affair and I never factored that in in any capacity, but it was really interesting to learn that new piece of information and braid it into something that had already been created.

A lot of the flashbacks feature you as children. Have you ever been surprised how close they look to you? –KP, via email

TS: It was so sweet, the girl who they cast as me was so sweet. She was so much more gentle than I was as a child. She was a gentle, gentle soul. Who did they cast for you?

NL: Shirley Temple!… I think because of the CGI holograms, what have you, and her estate was involved. I was so thrilled to have her, such a gift. Such a talented, talented young actress and it’s incredible what they can do. They reworked all the mouth stuff, and they had to colourise her.

TS: Oh, interesting.

NL: And you know that Nicky’s backstory was that she was a great song and dance man, when she was a child.

TS: “The Good Ship Lollipop.”

NL: There was a lot of “Good Ship Lollipop” stuff they did. I haven’t seen the episode but apparently Jenji told me that it was one of the great episodes of the show.

Do you find it easy to watch the show back, and if you do watch it back do you watch it in one go? –Hannah Baillie, via Facebook

TS: You’re talking to the wrong girls. Both of us. We both have a similar philosophy. There are a lot of people on our show who really watch the show well. I know that you [Natasha] had a conversation with Jenji and you started watching the show again.

But I feel, both of us – base-level, instinctual natural habitat is to not watch the work, for me. I don’t really like to watch me work very much, but that’s changing. But we’ve done it for six years now, so I’m trying to change that a little. Not trying to, purposefully, but it’s interesting to go back and watch things. I watch things very selectively. It doesn’t really serve me very much. I don’t learn a tremendous amount.

NL: It’s particularly tricky to watch. There’s just so many hours of watching yourself. If it wasn’t weird enough to see a movie that you’re in – the thing about a movie, at least it is spilt milk on some levels.

It’s a bit of a weird rollercoaster. It’s such a magnified experience to see yourself on a giant screen, so there are moments of great possibility followed by horror, you know. So anyway but then yes, that’s out in the world, there’s nothing I can do about it: I will walk out into this party and say hello, thank you so much, what a great movie you guys made.

On a TV show, the fact that us two didn’t start watching it, at this point we would have to sit down for a three-month marathon session of just staring us at ourselves.

TS: How many episodes? There’s been five seasons. We would have to sit down for 60 hours of TV, you know.